Thread: 6 months 40 yr old needs motivation

Hello all,

I’m about 183 cm tall and 86 kg. I would consider myself skinny fat. I’ve been skinny all my childhood and teen years. Narrow shoulders and chicken legs. In my 20s and 30s started gain weight and no muscles. Due to poor diet eating out and drinking beer.

Now I turned 40 and last August I started to use Gray Skull app. I work out at home using residence bands. I know these aren’t true weights. I’m an expat living in China and didn’t want to invest in free weights.

I’ve been doing Gray Skull since August and maybe around 22 weeks. Some weeks I did 3 days work out and some are 2 days. Some I took off a a week because holidays, being sick, or a injury from a work out.

My diets are usually clean and cook at home. I don’t eat out much. Maybe once or twice a week. Mornings I make my own yellow soy beans milk with some peanuts. Eat sweet potatoes and eggs.

Dinner time usually vegetables and 1 course beef. Normally no bad carbs, processed Food or box foods.

For 6 six months I still don’t physically any results. My weight stays steady from 83-86 kg. I like to lose the belly vascular fat. That’s where all my fat is located.

My exercise routine:

Gray Skull: Mon, Wed, Fri

Cardio P90 Sweat & Ab ripper B: Tues & Thurs.

Sat and sun: Rest days.

How long does it take to see any muscle tones?

I don’t physically see biceps or any back muscles. I got frustrated with my chest, so I started to do more push ups since I don’t have a bench. Everything are modify to use doors.


Any suggestions to keep pushing forward?

Thank you,

czulsk

Grey scull is a very rudimental exercise program. Resistance bands are no good for anything. P90 cardio will not make you lose fat, especially around abs, since you cannot target fat loss to a certain area. "Ab Ripper", eh. Join gym, there must be a gym somewhere in China.

Originally Posted by RyanJLuu

You can try calisthenics. Essentially HIIT along with good diet works great for me.

Calisthenics seems like an interesting option. I could do those twice a week substitute for the cardio since it requires little equipment. I would like to find a calisthenics workout program that I can follow.

Originally Posted by Corbets

Are you certain you’re “skinny fat”? I’m 193cm (also about your age at 41), and three years ago when I first got skinny, I was under 81kg. It might be that to get the look you want, you have to drop 5kg or so first.

And to be clear, that’s only going to happen with diet. If you’re not losing weight, you need to eat less (moving more is an option, but you still need to control your diet so that you’re aware of the variables and don’t eat more subconsciously as compensation).

Best of luck - if you want more information on the nutrition aspects, which are key to what you seem to be trying to achieve, head over to the nutrition sub-forums on this board. Lots, and I do mean LOTS, of useful info there in the stickies.

Diet is very hard.... most important thing is losing the waist line. I’ll be ok if I’m still the same as long as I have lower fat.

I often eat healthy. However, I still catch myself eating more carbs when I’m hungry; like bread, noodles, rice, potatoes. Normally, stay away from restaurants, and street foods.